Hating Tech? Hate Man!

Rampages against technology are fashionable: after all, we, and our entire world, depends upon it. Dependents are prisoners of their benefactor(s). The unwise will resent that. Technology is worse than a drug, then: it is the life support system of the most advanced apes who ever were. It is even more: our soul? The world-changing apes world-changed, and evolved for, and from, technology. If we have a creator specific to our species, here it is! Technology is out mother, father, what makes us possible. Hating our provider, our god: how pleasing!

Homo, the genus, and genius, is inseparable from technology. Saying technology doesn’t help, or doesn’t even help define what is human, is to have understood nothing to the genus Homo. Socrates took a stance: he posed as an anti-science, anti-tech, even anti-mental creativity type. Socrates refused even to write: after all, that’s tech too. But for his living, he depended upon an inherited stock portfolio, and his plutocratic friends and fiends. And, when, as a wealthy hoplite, he killed the enemy, it was because of his technologically superior, and very expensive armor and weapons. I can’t afford, as Socrates did, to be a hypocrite.

Diogenes too, was an anti-tech, anti-progress hypocrite: he lived in a barrel: that’s advanced technology, an expensive Gallic import… soon Gallic armies would battle down into Greece, thanks to their superior weapons due to superior metal works. Diogenes also had a dog: another advanced technology, a Genetically Modified Organism, whose carefully twisted mind makes him love and obey his master. The reason Diogenes didn’t have to battle giant European Cave Lions was that those had been driven to extinction, thanks to superior weapons.

Also Athens existed, and could feed Socrates and Diogenes, because it imported grain from the Black Sea, two weeks of shipping away (at best). Or from Cyrenaica. Attica was too dry to feed the largest Greek city. And Athens paid back, with superior tech. Demosthenes, the philosopher, inherited also from his father. His 40 slaves were making advanced tech, sold throughout the Mediterranean. As I said, it paid for food of the last Athenian dog. It goes without saying that this imperial organization rested on the mightiest army and navy, which had persuaded cities such as Byzantium to reasonably cooperate…

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The more human we get, the more tech we get, and live from:

So on tech we go. An interest of technology is to solve problems, which can’t be solved otherwise, lest we want to use massively the oldest methods, like cannibalism. There are countless examples, in history, of populations which have been reduced to zero, as needed by the sustainable ecological load.

As it is, we use much more planet than we have. We need another planet, or we need to quickly consume, say, 90% of humanity (the latter can easily be done, though… thanks to tech, both as an exterminator, and a redemptor).

The Counties of Alameda and Contra Costa (“AC”), in the San Francisco Bay Area form together AC Transit, which has purchased dozens of Fuel Cell Electric Buses. Those buses refuel hydrogen at dedicated service stations. Their waste? Water! Those buses aren’t just zero emission, they are the ideal complement of the photovoltaic energy rising in California. Some cities of AC provide free PV installations.

Elon Musk is an entrepreneur: he takes science invented by much deeper minds, and turns it into profitable technology. True, he got favored by Obama, in a shameless manner… while Obama killed important technologies such as Fuel Cells… to leave room to Musk, and other Silicon Valley friends Obama had (now busy making him rich). True the plutocratic connection between Musk and tech monopolies and the Obama administration was disgusting, and many involved should how be prosecuted. I wrote extensively against Musk and Bezos in the past, because they go so much help from the Obama White House. However, the fact is now both of these two plutocrat have made an important technological advance: rockets can be reused! “Space Shuttle” launches used to cost 1.5 billion dollars (yes, billion, with a b… per launch). Musk thinks he could launch a much bigger rocket for six million dollars. Indeed, doing the math, the cost of launch should be no more than a jumbo jet transcontinental flight… if the rocket is sophisticated enough.

Yet, the transition from deep science to a deeper socio-economy shouldn’t be neglected: they are entangled. No advancement of the socio-economy, no advancement of science, and reciprocally.

Rome failed because it couldn’t get going the science it needed, because its exaggeratingly fascist, pathetically impotent socio-economy (the combination of slavery and autocracy, too strong for enabling the People to contribute, not enough to crush plutocrats). Now, of course, the Romans weren’t too brainy to start with… and they kept Greece too subjugated, before finally snuffing it by mad theocracy (when the Academies were ordered closed by a Roman emperor.)

In the Tenth Century, new cultivars, of beans for the Franks, and of rice for the Vietnamese/Chinese, made a better fed Europe and East Asia forge ahead as ever more domineering civilizations… New cultivars are new technology…

Facebook is a different problem from the space adventures of Musk and Bezos. First, Facebook has no added value: all it does is spy, and find new fixes for its addicts (Instagram). Facebook is horrendously unethical, and a return to a primitivism worse than the Middle Ages. Facebook has indeed decided to censor artwork from the Middle Ages… “even if it has educational value“… Facebook grotesquely asserts. No wonder, it’s led by an uneducated grabster, used to wrap presidents around its little robotic fingers…

In general plutocracy is killing civilization. Always has, always will. However, the grandeur of Bezos’ and Musk’s missions is such, one has to make a grudging exception for them, as long as they keep on going… to Mars. That doesn’t mean we have run out of targets: all the financial derivative sector, worth 1,400 trillion dollars (yes, with a t, $1,400 thousand billions) should be destroyed. It is because it doesn’t exist in China, that China has become the world’s greatest economic power… Financiers bootstrapping themselves so they can crush us when they come down… What’s worse?
Patrice Ayme

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For comic relief, one can read Massimo Pigliucci’s and Correy Mohler’s”Diogenes the Cynic vs Elon MuskWhat wisdom could the great Cynic offer to our modern-day Alexander?“. Dogs can bark, but thinking deep is not their forte… So I thank Massimo for the spark to the blistering critique above… And indeed, first, to compare Musk to Alexander the Great is beyond grotesque: Alexander is a serious, not to say mass lethal, subject. Musk is cute, but basically completely replaceable (first, consider Bezos, who is coming up with similar rockets…)

31 Responses to “Hating Tech? Hate Man!”

How true. What will it take to get hydrogen tech to replace batteries or fossil fuels? Making it cheaper and just as convenient than oil? If so, then it could be soon. Or will fossil fuel plutocrats be able to obstruct for too long? Mars seems a bit too out of reach anytime soon.

Hi M Ayme, I’m always very surprised when I see/hear the words terraforming and Mars in the same sentence.
From what I read about Mars, is that’s death have allready do her job for this patient. (For that point, I think that the presence of Hellas Planitia (And other mega cratere) on a side, and Olympus Mont (And other mega volcano on the other side) with Tharsis elevation, is not just a coincidence. )
No more magnetic shelter, and so, no more “hypothetic surface life”. Game over … Solar wind blow atmosphere.
That’s the point I don’t understand about terraforming on a death planet. What’s the plan to keep the new atmosphere at the right place?
(Comme je suis français, merci d’excuser mes diverses approximations! Et merci pour vos articles que je lis avec beaucoup de curiosité et d’intérêt)
Sincerly,
Eric.

Hi Eric! Sorry for the delay in admitting the comment, I am very involved with (desperate) care for my elderly mom, who has lung fibrosis… She survives, barely, under oxygen, as if she were somewhere in outer space. 20 years ago, she would have been dead for many months, and US doctors told me they pull the plug in such a case…
Anyway your comments should get in instantaneously from now on (I don’t “moderate” my commenters, because I am obviously the one who needs moderation…)

Right, we have found out that MASS CORONAL EJECTIONS (MCE) strip the Martian atmosphere, due to lack of magnetic shield. This is not just a theory, it has been measured. However, Mars took more than a billion years to lose its atmospheric water (air), or so it seems. BTW, if we put an atmosphere on the MOON, it would survive for thousands of even millions of years…

From my point of view, Mars’ terraforming is just a question of having thermonuclear fusion. Notice also that Mars oscillates all the way down to 40 degrees on the ecliptic, so Mars knows SUPER SUMMERS…. Hence heating Mars up by releasing CO2 and H2O in the atmosphere through human agency would not be out of the Martian ordinary, initially.

I am also world French, so to speak… We, in the “West”, all the way down to New Zealand, and the Reunion/Mauritius are all so, without knowing it, just as Mr. Jourdain was an expert at prose, without knowing it…

I’m trouble by reading your bad news and I sincerely think to you and your mother with friendly and positive thoughts. (She has a good and protective son who take care of her and of our mind. By this time of Egocratie, first daughter of Plutocratie, adopted nowadays by a massive contingent of scatterbrained, it’s rare and precious. For this point, I think that France take risk by following Macron’s way, Republic or Egocratie, we are on the crossroad. )
Back on Mars now.
Yes, I’ve already read about tech solution (there always a tech solution for “every” problem, thanks to engineers and their patents) for terraforming. And perhaps, if nuclear- atmosphere provider fill Martian atmosphere faster than Sun wind blow it, yes, it match. And even if we don’t think about UV’s mass destruction weapon, or hypothetical bad bacteria reborn after inevitably soil extraction, for which kind of customer would we do that?…
Building machinery just because it’s possible it’s not a bankable solution.
One of my old job was AET (Agent Étude du Temps ou Travail) where I learn MTM (Method Time Management) technical. One of the most important trick I learn, and I use since is to ask this question : what is the predetermined goal? For what do you do that?
It’s the first and crucial question we have to ask ourselves.
And here, or rather on Mars, what is going to happen? Or more precisely, who is going to land on soil? Men and women? I don’t think so. So yes, I agree, we effectively could send men and women on Mars. But the first thing they will need wasn’t atmosphere. They will need a new body. At least, a wheeling chair for the few weeks/months they will survive after deadly space travel from our safer magnetosphere. Perhaps a massive leaded-cryogenic coffin, could give a little protection or nuclear- artificial magnetosphere generated by the vessel or by another (best solution I think) as a shield between travelers and the Sun could make this dream come true.
Or teleportation…
(Take a look to Nasa’s twins experiment. Ok, the material time flow less quicker at the high speed allowed in space, but body corp states is degrading so, so, much quicker on micro gravity and exposed to lethal space beam, even on ISS who is in our magnetosphere, that we see that the one who have his clock in late have in fact 10 year more. Some of affects seem to have no way back)
Life don’t like outer space.
Build rocket is mandatory. But it’s not the first goal to reach. Keep the customer alive, that’s the crucial point.
Build rocket is mandatory of you want the people follow and accept the x billions dollars (or euro) project.
But for my reason and my brain it’s clearly not to land on Mars. It’s just to increase reputation of “Muskzoz” (and earn few dollars, by selling travel ticket to close and safe space, at 200 km high).
And yet, I would be happy to see that dream come true. Being a Martian.

American society has completely lost any trace of solidarity, what Ibn Khaldun called asabiya (solidarity, group feeling, or group consciousness; aka beneficial social contract). The penile rockets of Bezass and Musky are egotistical displays, and probably inefficient efforts compared to NASA in its heyday. The only cathedrals we build today are dedicated to money.

Interestingly, Turchin uses a simple income dispersion metric to proxy social solidarity, and produces quite amazing graphs of social dynamics in the “Ages of Discord,” including immigration, immiseration, elite overproduction, episodic violence, etc., in very parsimonious models. He even gives the difference equations and makes the data available.

Obama ranks as the most disgusting, disgraceful, weak, duplicitous, sleazy President of my lifetime and possibly of all time. See Thomas Frank taking him at https://t.co/c6p28ZtlE3

I used to foam and rage against Obama giving billions to Musk either through NASA or directly. The essays are still out there. Then at some point somebody got the ludicrous idea to claim rockets could be landed and reused. Musk tried and tried and tried again… Until it worked! If that works 100% as it does for a plane, all the cost is maintenance and fuel… No more.

I actually long noticed that point: the fuel to get a jumbo to orbit is no more than to get to Sydney from LA…

NASA, ESA, the Soviets (so-called Russians, or reciprocally), the Chinese, the Japs and the Indians, and even the French, didn’t get that idea. Most embarrassingly, I, ME, MYSELF, etc. did NOT get that idea. It’s weird: it was an obvious idea. Arianespace considered it, computed, rejected. Musk did it.

NASA became ridiculous, once the old Nazi engineers retired (when I wrote something like that, several Germans unfollowed me and call me a racist… Racist against Nazis…) My own spouse worked at NASA for years. Years to get the appropriate computer… So, well, I am pro-SpaceX and pro-Blue Origin at this point. I am not naive: the way to Mars will be long. Microbes, Musk didn’t consider (with some probes decontamination cost 80 million dollars, and was still incomplete…)https://www.space.com/41345-planetary-protection-standards-for-human-spaceflight.html?utm_source=notification

For my friend Obama, I reached the same conclusions as you, as soon as he became president, with full powers, much greater than Trump, claiming he couldn’t do a thing, because the Reps, while taking himself for god, when all he did was to talk like me while following the orders of his new found Pluto friends…

About “reutilisable” space vehicle, there were 2 previous trying. US space shuttle and Soviet Bourane. Well… we know the end. Note that the automatic mode allowed by Bourane was very interesting. (“She” never carrying people I remember)
Few years ago, I had been surprise by the concept of nano carbon wire used as a lift. Ok in marvel movie but not in reality. This kind of ultra long wire should perhaps been used for electrical generation from magnétosphère.
A way to explore is perhaps, the way initiate by Montgolfier’s brother. The balloon. Take a balloon like Baumgartner use for his parachuting performance. It will climb the first kilometers to the limit of space, without tons of fuel, and without all risk of explosion, fix a small rocket for the last kilometers and welcome in space.
So yes, there is no spectacular noise and vibration, no outstanding acceleration, no WTF reaction, but I think that this way should be a correct alternative.
And cheaper than those “get back” rockets.

US space shuttle had useless wings… Worse than useless, turned out. SpaceX/BO do away with wings: smart. They let the atmosphere do most of the braking (using titanium fins for F9), then slow down at the last moment… Proof is in pudding. FH launches more than the SS, for 5% of the cost…
A Japanese company claims it has carbon nano wire strong enough for space elevator…

It’s ok than space shuttle was a bad way. However, what a pretty good look concept at the beginning, as we hear for F9.
But for me her real first mission was a success :
Show to the world than USA was so much powerful than USSR and contribute to push their society to bankrupt. (Today it’s funny to concluded that Russian lost space race. But they are the only one who can carry people, and with 100% of efficiency)
And wing don’t appear to me as the worst thing. Their mission was to get to soil with 0 fuel burned. And the wing have never cause any accident. (For Columbia STS 107, it was a collision of foam. On wing, yes, but if foam have hit the nose, the tragedy was surely be the same.)
The so much expensive cost is because it was a manned vehicle, and even it was a all- in- one concept : carry the charge, the men, the Canadarm…
As I wrote, don’t forget the predeterminated goal.
And for the real cost, as we say in my countryside : c’est à la fin du bal qu’on paie l’orchestre.
Concerning Japan nano carbon wire, of course they say it will work. But in France, we have seen yet this kind of engineer dream : we have build SuperPhenix! (120 billion of francs!) As the project manager (a engineer of “l’école des Mines”) say in interview : en sciences, on fait des manip, et parfois, la manip ne fonctionne pas)
NASA’s biggest problem is that they got to carry people with 100% of success.
I don’t think that F9 will ever carry people in space. Too risky. And if they try, I bet that the cost will increase so so so much. Even ESA’s Ariane have stopped Hermes project.
Too risky for an “acceptable” cost.

SS wings, vertical tail, landing gear weighted many tons… of dead weight. The wings were made them larger than the original plans called for because when they joined up with the Air Force, one of the requirements for the Air Force was a 1,500 mile cross-range (2,400 kilometers!!!!!!!!!!!!). This meant a larger vehicle and a larger wing surface to make it more of a glider.

The ceramic tiles didn’t work. F9 is scheduled to carry people within 6 months. It’s a very robust system with a 0/0 escape system, and capable of full mission with two engines outs. NASA has a problem with Musk’s concept of loading hyper cooled oxygen at the last moment, astronauts on board, though… Boeing may launch first, within 5 months…

Ariane didn’t stop Hermes. Europe did, because Europe has no ambition…. Europe prefers to depend upon Russia and the US: slave mentality…

There’s a lot of good points, but I’ll concentrate on just one (for now): “the grandeur of Bezos’ and Musk’s missions is such, one has to make a grudging exception for them, as long as they keep on going… to Mars.”

You’ve made an essential point here. Great wealth – and great wealth disparities – may be unavoidable. But the cultural attitude towards great wealth can itself mitigate the problem and curb plutocratic excess.

At present, we value wealth, opulence, luxury and consumption. (In fact, I’d suggest we value wealth but no longer have much respect for self-made wealth over inherited wealth, a dangerous attitude.) But we don’t value any social obligations that comes with this wealth. Consider the the most revered mogul of our time: Steve Jobs. He gave next to nothing of his wealth to charity nor did he invest his billions in moonshot initiatives. But his much less respected peer, Bill Gates, is doing just that. Noblesse oblige. His attitude remains rare, though. Are Bezos and Musky of this ilk or are their rockets merely taking their egos to Mars? Look upon their works and despair?

I used to be scathing with Musk and Bezos: the essays are out there, and still valid. HOWEVER, they are redeeming themselves with their reusable rockets. Musk’s electric cars also worked: they contributed to the launch of a worldwide effort towards electricity. (Although Concorde and then Airbus going nearly all-electric was 40 years earlier…)

There is a fine balance between enabling huge creativity of the independent capitalists and then acquiring too much power in society. Jobs was just a marketer and a product developer. Musk and Bezos are real engineers… Gates was closer to Jobs in many ways, but, indeed, he has been doing lots with his foundation… However some think the foundation has been negative:https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/gates-of-hell/

Okay, the reusable rockets are worthy of admiration. Would NASA have developed them (as ESA did not)? Maybe. But as I understand it Congress felt they needed Star Trek optics to get funding so they built the Big Turkey, the Shuttle, which I gagged at when it was unveiled as the most complex machine in the universe, and one that clearly was likely to blow up when some little thing went wrong. But in the years from JFK’s challenge to Apollo 12 (1969, same year the Beatles broke up), NASA was invincible. I was a kid in the 60s and was rocket obsessed.

Arianespace studied a return the engine & avionics through mini-wing vehicle, found it made sense, but they didn’t have the money right away. Musk and Bezos went the full hog… OK, preceded by Herge’ the inventor of Tintin, which had a single-stage-to-orbit rocket in the adventures of Tintin. Musk Big Fucking Rocket is also a SSO (they will test it with little hops initially, just as they tested their returning Falcons…

NASA never had any intent to make a return vehicle. The Space Shuttle was one only in name. There was a communicatio snafu between Nixon, NASA and the military. Military wanted a vehicle capable of sideways deviation to land in any salt flat vehicle… So they claim… In any case, the concept was wrong.

The 100 NAZI engineers heading NASA (NAZA?) were invincible… their projects under their beloved “guide” were sciencefictiony to the max… That contaminated especially the French and the US who had far-out projects (nuclear explosion rocket in USA, project Orion… Project of flying hydrogen hypersonic plane…) The French realized experimental piloted ramjets, something straight out of Scifi…
The thing to do, both with Concorde (the first fly-by-wire) and Saturn (V) was to keep on developing: Concorde B, Saturn VI, etc… Concorde B (bigger, more efficient) didn’t happen because the USA sabotaged Concorde… Saturn VI was not exciting and is now resurrected as the SLS… whose only worth is to breathe down SaceX, BO, Orbital Science and ULA

Hate tech? Hate man! Well, guess who hates tech more than anyone else on the planet? Trump and the Republicans! They hate climate science and call it a hoax. They have climate change denial derangement syndrome. Humans are not going to make it to Mars while lunacy reigns among its leaders. And sadly, we see some of our best and smartest people, people I admire, facilitate the lunacy by ignoring it.

OK. When Reagan came to power, I thought the US would have a strong reaction against him… Instead we got Dems like Clinton and especially Obama, who admired Reagan! So I was wrong. I don’t think Trump is as simplistic as Reagan… Maybe I am wrong. But Trump was all over the place in his party affiliations… Some of his ideas, though, didn’t change since the 1970s and 1980s (when he opposed Reagan on some points).
At this point I have NOT been following the proposed budget relative science. Trump though, doesn’t even control the Republican party…All I know is that the DOE just came out with a report on the AC hydrogen fuel buses which was ecstatic positive… Hydrogen at this point is the crux.

Right, Trump went to Europe to excoriate Merkler about Russian gas… because he wants to sell Europe US gas… But the fracking thing was deliberately pushed by Obama (instead of hydrogen). Obama called it (repeating as a parrot) a “bridge fuel”…. In general, what interest me is the positive propositions. A brain challenged Republican like gov Perry of Texas, talking fossil fuels big, now head of DOE, made Texas the number one wind power in the world….

Obama, or Clinton, talked one way, acted the opposite, all too often. Trump is not going to carry California, so he may as well spit on it, instead of campaigning there as Clinton idiotically did…

The point is not to lament about the enemy (Trump) but to lament about traitors (Clintons, Obama… I won’t bother mentioning the despicable W). Specialists, like the Naval officer in charge of fighting sea level rise, say they were given no means under Obama, and there is no change under Trump…

Thanks for the link. I am aware of the policy. I doubt it will save coal after November… BUT it’s important to keep NUCLEAR plants open… Instead of going catastrophically the way of Merkler/Germany, where the CO2 emissions have AUGMENTED (and she still has some nuke plants working…)
Nuke plant Diablo Canyon in California, scheduled to close within 5 years, is a slightly different matter: it’s on several faults and California is going solar, full blast… However, if Trump forced it open, I won’t cry… I know an engineer who works as inspector of security at DC, he says the plant is safe…

Instead, Obama didn’t do anything… besides pushing fracking, and improving mileage in, what, 2025??? Trump knows he can’t do a thing for coal. Even China is decarbonizing as fast as possible. Cruise ships are more of a problem than Trump at this point.

SpaceX and Boeing won’t be flying crewed test flights of their new astronaut taxis until well into 2019, according to a new schedule NASA released today (Aug. 2).

The new launch schedule comes just a day before the agency will announce which astronauts will be aboard which company’s test and maiden crewed flights as the space community continues its quest to bring human spaceflight back to the U.S.

Before today’s announcement, NASA had officially planned for both SpaceX and Boeing to fly uncrewed test flights of their capsules — known as Crew Dragon and the CST-100 Starliner, respectively — this month. Boeing was scheduled to launch its first crewed test mission in November 2018, with SpaceX’s equivalent flight coming the next month.

Now, however, the SpaceX uncrewed flight is scheduled for November 2018 and its crewed successor for April 2019 — edging in front of Boeing’s planned launches.

Boeing’s uncrewed test flight is now targeted for “late 2018/early 2019,” and the crewed debut is planned for “mid-2019.” That news from NASA follows after Boeing announced yesterday (Aug. 1) that it would delay the launches on a similar schedule, which came in the wake of recent troubles with its launch abort engines during a static fire test. Boeing did not specify whether the delay was due to that issue, however.

Trump wants a “space force” as a new branch of the US military. An even bigger military budget coming our way? Another trough for plutos to feed at while general populace cannot get universal health care. Space battles to keep the faithful ramped up about the flag and the anthem!